1. Technical Field
Aspects of the present invention relate to a system in which a service is provided from a service-providing device to a client device.
2. Description of Related Art
A system in which a service-providing device provides service-related information to a client device has been widely used. Such a service is frequently called an information providing service. A system in which a service-providing device provides a data processing service to a client device by obtaining data to be processed from the client device and processing the obtained data has also been widely used.
As a client device for receiving an information providing service, a device configured to receive a service from a server by receiving web data from the server and displaying the received web data on its display unit has been widely used. On a web site “RSS reader Rabbit Ticker” found on the world wide web at “work.at.co.jp/rabbit/”, an example of a client device for receiving information providing service is disclosed. The client device disclosed on the web site accesses a server to judge whether new information is posted on the server, and obtains the new information from the server if the new information is posted on the server.
In Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. HEI 9-238215, a system in which a digital copying device is connected to a host computer having a function that the digital copying device does not have is disclosed In this system, the function that the digital copying device does not have is executed by the host computer and processed data is provided to the digital copying deice so that the digital copying device can attain the function through the host computer.
A system in which late information (e.g. news) is provided promptly from a service-providing device to a client device is also widely used. In such a system, the service-providing device obtains service-related setting information from the client device so as to make a usage registration of a service for the client device, and thereafter provides the service to the client device, for example, by providing information matching a keyword or a data type contained in the service-related setting information to the client device.
Frequently, such a service-providing device is configured to automatically delete the usage registration of the service if a certain event arises. One of such events causing the deletion of the usage registration is continuation of a state in which the service-providing device can not locate the client device to which the service is to be provided due to, for example, power off of the client device. If the service to be provided to the client device is a pay service, the service-providing device may delete the usage registration for the client device if a prepaid card becomes invalid or a credit card transaction becomes unavailable.
It is noted that there is a case where a user does not want such automatic deletion of the usage registration. If the user does not want such automatic deletion of the usage registration, the user needs to make a re-registration by re-inputting the setting information through the client device to re-transmit the setting information to the service-providing device again. However, such an inputting operation for making a re-registration is troublesome for the user.